I find Siri to be largely useless - I only use it to respond to texts while driving, and (literally) 90% of texts I try to send contain errors. I have an English accent, and it improves slightly if I fake an American accent, but it’s still garbage. If it can’t even get the simple stuff correct, I have no desire to try to use it for more complex activities. My echo on the other hand is phenomenally good at understanding me - I pretty much only use it for playing music, but it’s great. There is only one reason Siri isn’t dead, and that’s the size of the install base. In all other respects, Siri is far far behind, so much so that apple should be embarrassed, and whoever is in charge of that group should be fired.
So, you use Siri to keep you and others safe as you drive. Siri, in a noisy car, misunderstands some of the words you say but you keep using it. Echo on the other hand can do complex things, play a song.
I use Siri in my car via Car Play to listen to my text messages and respond, get directions to a destination, play music, answer and make phone calls. My eyes stay on the road and my hands on the steering wheel. And my vehicle is a pickup, not the quietest of environments. My HomePod, iPad and Watch do most of these things while I am at home.
I admit that I have not tried Echo for anything so I can not compare them, only relate my experiences.
DED articles are the girl that cried "Wolf!", it's fun in the beginning but after a few years it gets boring and predictable.
His articles always seem awfully defensive. I mean if Siri was the best DED wouldn’t need to write a long article telling us was. Everyone would just know it. My biggest issue with Siri is consistency. One day when I ask Siri if it’s windy out Siri says “no I don’t think it’s all that windy, about 11 mph right now”. The next day I ask the same question and Siri says “yes it does seem rather windy, about 9 mph right now”. And there are times where Siri will say sorry it can’t get an answer for me for things it’s given me an answer on in the past. I’m glad Siri has a dedicated SVP now but unfortunately Cook allowed it to languish under Eddy Cue’s org for far to long.
The article doesn’t say Siri is “the best.”
It says Siri has been embarrassingly behind and lacks various features Amazon has spent tremendous amounts of resources to develop.
Did you read it, or are you just playing Chatty Cathy, where you plug your own string and play your recording of your contempt for the author?
The point of of the article is that that the hype of Alexa—and all those invested resources—have not accomplished anything for Amazon, while Apple has been virtually 100% unaffected in continuing to make all the available profits from consumer tech hardware sales.
You always assume editorials are defending Apple. But Apple doesn’t need to be defended. It’s gobbling up the world. The article is defending the previous articles you defensively attacked. You were wrong. You just can’t admit it. So you pull out a straw man about how frustrated you are with Siri. Are you unaware that everyone else that uses Siri knows of its limitations?
The article isn't about Siri’s relative prowess in being able to understand your speech. It’s about BS media narratives that are hogwash.
The only people using Shortcuts on a regular basis are power users like Federico Vittici. It’s great for power users but the average iOS user shouldn’t be expected to know or learn scripting to get the most out of Siri.
Automation is powerful for some people with specific needs. But using Siri Shortcuts do not learning scripting. Developers can turn any task into a button anyone can invoke with their voice.
I think the piece adequately defends Apple’s approach to voice assistant direction from an economic/tactical perspective: clearly Apple has made money on hardware that had its voice assistant whereas the competition has not. But it’s kind of ignoring Siri’s strategic weakness: whereas Apple seems content to make Siri an ever more talented id1ot savant, Google and Amazon are aiming at making their assistants conversationally capable servants.
I’m a big Apple fan - have nearly every one of their devices. But to be honest, I’d much rather be using Google Assistant than Siri. The only reason I stay with Siri are my concerns for privacy and Siri’s deeper integration with my phone and other Apple services/devices.
Siri shortcuts are a joke - nobody, except Apple geeks, even know about them. Heck, even though I know about them and have 2 computer science degrees, I don’t even use them. People shouldn’t have to “program” a voice assistant to make it more useful - that should be the job of the Siri engineering team! As the author continually points out, Apple is making heaps of money - how about using some of that to light a fire under the Siri team’s a$$?
DED articles are the girl that cried "Wolf!", it's fun in the beginning but after a few years it gets boring and predictable.
The boy who cried wolf is a story about lying and then subsequently not being taken seriously.
The “DED articles” you malign with your mangled-nonsensical metaphor haven’t “cried wolf” about anything. Specific to Alexa and voice, they’ve set a record of being consistently correct for years while punditry were spewing grand forecasts and dire warnings about a lot of wolf-stuff that never ended up happening.
And if you want to take real action about being boring and predictable, look in the mirror. Your comments are ceaselessly, pointlessly, embittered naggy barbs that don’t add anything to the conversation.
No reason to be so aggressive. He actually IS right, while often interesting and sometimes correct, your articles tend to be far too wordy and one-sided. Even something called an Editorial can be balanced and focused. Just a hint from a former journalist gone app developer.
It would be great to simplify this content into memes or video to reach a broader audience.
What would you suggest would bring more “balance” or “focus” to this piece? Fewer examples of predictions that turned out false? Less evidence of the negative ROI Amazon got from developing a low value, albeit often impressive technology? I’d appreciate your feedback.
It’s called an Editorial because facts are now controversial in an era where everyone thinks their opinion is valuable just because it occured to them to be right, regardless of any factual basis supporting it.
This article, as is generally the case with AI’s editorials, is short on facts and long on opinions and conclusions that resolve in favor of the author’s Apple bias. For example, statement that Shortcuts made Siri “ultra powerful” is pure unsupported hyperbole.
There is no objective metric by which Siri is better than just about every other voice assistant. Siri can’t even set a wake up alarm with 100% accuracy in a given week.
The author also discusses voice assistants as if the war has already been fought and is now over, with Apple the clear winner. Neither is correct, though it’s a position that furthers the author’s pro-Apple agenda.
It is not even controversial to say that Siri Shortcuts make Siri ultra powerful. And that idea is not related to whether Alexa or other voice services still have (as the article described) features that Siri doesn’t have.
The article points out pretty clearly that after four years of blown expectations, there’s no reasonable expectation for Alexa suddenly making billions. And over the last 4 years, Apple has earned $200 billion in profits.
So yes, The war has already been fought and Apple is the clear winner. Prove me wrong.
Apple's HomePod sold about 3 million units across just the second half of last year, generating more than another billion in revenue at its debut. That's equivalent to the revenues of 20 million units of Echo Dots (when they're not on sale), but HomePod is profitable. Nobody predicted that Apple would be earning more money than Amazon from "smart speakers" back at the peak of Alexa hysteria.
There is no meaningful proof from Apple on the number of HomePods sold to substantiate this 3 million number or that the half year revenue exceeded $1Billion dollars as Apple never broke out figures for it in its financials. I would even say the fact that Apple never mentioned hard numbers about units , revenue, ASP , or Profit points to how much it is a failure (which is why the linked articles suggests the need for a cheaper unit to compete with Alexa. I would be surprised it Apple passed $2 Billion in revenue for the considering the number of sales for $250 I saw in the holiday season but it's still a possibility. The author seems to like to pick and choose which "Surveys" he finds credible and which he attacks. A later survey (https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/05/homepod-holding-at-6-percent-of-growing-us-smartspeaker-market) indicates only 3.96 Milllion sold for the year indicating Holiday sales were mostly ineffective to move the HomePod into the mainstream beyond the initial the debut 3 million of sales to Apple loyalists.
br> But for Amazon, the idea that 5,000 people were working on a loss leader novelty feature that wasn't accomplishing anything across years of monumental investment was just plain exciting. Even more so was that fact that Amazon was also trying to hire hundreds more to work on its "Alexa engine" and "Alexa machine learning." And even more exciting was the fact that Amazon was building its own urban campus in the middle of Seattle for $4 billion, featuring giant Spheres full of plants. .. The tightly integrated nature of Siri means that even a significantly better voice competitor wouldn't be enough to gut and replace Apple's $200 billion worth of annual hardware sales. Apple's users can make use of Alexa, or Assistant or even Cortana without changing their hardware and without removing Siri functionality.
I find Siri to be largely useless - I only use it to respond to texts while driving, and (literally) 90% of texts I try to send contain errors. I have an English accent, and it improves slightly if I fake an American accent, but it’s still garbage. If it can’t even get the simple stuff correct, I have no desire to try to use it for more complex activities. My echo on the other hand is phenomenally good at understanding me - I pretty much only use it for playing music, but it’s great. There is only one reason Siri isn’t dead, and that’s the size of the install base. In all other respects, Siri is far far behind, so much so that apple should be embarrassed, and whoever is in charge of that group should be fired.
So, you use Siri to keep you and others safe as you drive. Siri, in a noisy car, misunderstands some of the words you say but you keep using it. Echo on the other hand can do complex things, play a song.
I use Siri in my car via Car Play to listen to my text messages and respond, get directions to a destination, play music, answer and make phone calls. My eyes stay on the road and my hands on the steering wheel. And my vehicle is a pickup, not the quietest of environments. My HomePod, iPad and Watch do most of these things while I am at home.
I admit that I have not tried Echo for anything so I can not compare them, only relate my experiences.
A comparison between Alex Auto and integrated CarPlay might make sense but the OP comparing a living room Echo to the microphones in a car is a real head scratcher.
Apple's HomePod sold about 3 million units across just the second half of last year, generating more than another billion in revenue at its debut. That's equivalent to the revenues of 20 million units of Echo Dots (when they're not on sale), but HomePod is profitable. Nobody predicted that Apple would be earning more money than Amazon from "smart speakers" back at the peak of Alexa hysteria.
There is no meaningful proof from Apple on the number of HomePods sold to substantiate this 3 million number or that the half year revenue exceeded $1Billion dollars as Apple never broke out figures for it in its financials. I would even say the fact that Apple never mentioned hard numbers about units , revenue, ASP , or Profit points to how much it is a failure (which is why the linked articles suggests the need for a cheaper unit to compete with Alexa. I would be surprised it Apple passed $2 Billion in revenue for the considering the number of sales for $250 I saw in the holiday season but it's still a possibility. The author seems to like to pick and choose which "Surveys" he finds credible and which he attacks. A later survey (https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/05/homepod-holding-at-6-percent-of-growing-us-smartspeaker-market) indicates only 3.96 Milllion sold for the year indicating Holiday sales were mostly ineffective to move the HomePod into the mainstream beyond the initial the debut 3 million of sales to Apple loyalists.
br> But for Amazon, the idea that 5,000 people were working on a loss leader novelty feature that wasn't accomplishing anything across years of monumental investment was just plain exciting. Even more so was that fact that Amazon was also trying to hire hundreds more to work on its "Alexa engine" and "Alexa machine learning." And even more exciting was the fact that Amazon was building its own urban campus in the middle of Seattle for $4 billion, featuring giant Spheres full of plants. .. The tightly integrated nature of Siri means that even a significantly better voice competitor wouldn't be enough to gut and replace Apple's $200 billion worth of annual hardware sales. Apple's users can make use of Alexa, or Assistant or even Cortana without changing their hardware and without removing Siri functionality.
Also think about how many years HomePod has been available. It’s just part of 2018.
And again, you’re attacking the idea that the article is defending Siri as the best, when that’s not even implied in the title, the lede, the article, or in the conclusion.
DED articles are the girl that cried "Wolf!", it's fun in the beginning but after a few years it gets boring and predictable.
Yes. I think these editorials are often a hissy-fit reaction to either positive news about competing products or bad news concerning Apple. In this case it would probably be all the negative news news concerning AirPower two weeks ago. And yes waiting to cancel AirPower after a week of orders for the new AirPod case with chi charging was a "used car Salesman" type of move.
DED articles are the girl that cried "Wolf!", it's fun in the beginning but after a few years it gets boring and predictable.
I don't bother reading them anymore, they're way too long and speak about Apple like its a religious deity. A quick skim sometimes but the cultist like preaching is really tiring, as are the constant excuses and workarounds for problems that are allegedly non-issues. Apple apparently never does anything wrong either, even the keyboard issue isn't actually a problem and nor are falling phone sales, everyone - even Apple fans - that have concern are portrayed as idiots by DED.
You shouldn't have to make shortcuts to do things that are built-in to other assistants, you shouldn't have to say things in a particular way to get Siri to understand.
The only people using Shortcuts on a regular basis are power users like Federico Vittici. It’s great for power users but the average iOS user shouldn’t be expected to know or learn scripting to get the most out of Siri.
There are a lot of great pre-made Shortcuts out there for anybody to add to their iPhone. Just search "Siri Shortcuts" (I know you know this). People don't have to know or learn scripting to get the most out of Siri. lol
None of these may be useful to you, but the point is anybody can find them and add them without knowing or learning scripting to get the most out of Siri. lol
This for me is the key takeaway: Apple wants to keep AI processing in the device rather than send it to a server up in the cloud. As of now, the computing power a device offers may not be enough to pull that off elegantly and completely, but heck, don't forget that old Jobsian saw about skating and pucks. "We can do all the AI things that Google and Amazon can do but we're not letting one bit of data leak out of your device into the cloud." That's a nice pitch.
I think the piece adequately defends Apple’s approach to voice assistant direction from an economic/tactical perspective: clearly Apple has made money on hardware that had its voice assistant whereas the competition has not. But it’s kind of ignoring Siri’s strategic weakness: whereas Apple seems content to make Siri an ever more talented id1ot savant, Google and Amazon are aiming at making their assistants conversationally capable servants.
I’m a big Apple fan - have nearly every one of their devices. But to be honest, I’d much rather be using Google Assistant than Siri. The only reason I stay with Siri are my concerns for privacy and Siri’s deeper integration with my phone and other Apple services/devices.
Siri shortcuts are a joke - nobody, except Apple geeks, even know about them. Heck, even though I know about them and have 2 computer science degrees, I don’t even use them. People shouldn’t have to “program” a voice assistant to make it more useful - that should be the job of the Siri engineering team! As the author continually points out, Apple is making heaps of money - how about using some of that to light a fire under the Siri team’s a$$?
What? I have had the alarm.com app for years. Last year they added Siri Shortcut support and it took about 2 minutes to set up Siri commands to arm away/arm home and disarm. It’s great! I didn’t have to program anything. Now when I come home I can tell Siri to disarm my house and I don’t have to fiddle with entering a code or listen to the annoying tone that goes off when I open the door.
My friend also has alarm.com and enabled the same things I did. She also has a couple of Echos that are completely useless in arming or disarming the house when she is outside. But, besides that, how is adding Siri Shortcuts to an app different that installing a Skill on Echo?
It really does not matter if Siri really is the best voice assistant or not.
What matters is the public preception.
Amazon is spending big.. no make that really big on promoting Alexa here in the UK. Apple? not a penny.
Google has had some adverts but Amazons are much better, slicker and far more attracting even if the scenarios presented are frankly wierd.
Alexa wins. End of argument.
I don't have any particular axe to grind as I won't use any of them no matter how good they are. Siri is the first thing I switch off when I get a new Apple device. Amazon and Google devices are nothing more than spies in your life that you have had to pay for. Who would be ... oh never mind.
I think the piece adequately defends Apple’s approach to voice assistant direction from an economic/tactical perspective: clearly Apple has made money on hardware that had its voice assistant whereas the competition has not. But it’s kind of ignoring Siri’s strategic weakness: whereas Apple seems content to make Siri an ever more talented id1ot savant, Google and Amazon are aiming at making their assistants conversationally capable servants.
I’m a big Apple fan - have nearly every one of their devices. But to be honest, I’d much rather be using Google Assistant than Siri. The only reason I stay with Siri are my concerns for privacy and Siri’s deeper integration with my phone and other Apple services/devices.
Siri shortcuts are a joke - nobody, except Apple geeks, even know about them. Heck, even though I know about them and have 2 computer science degrees, I don’t even use them. People shouldn’t have to “program” a voice assistant to make it more useful - that should be the job of the Siri engineering team! As the author continually points out, Apple is making heaps of money - how about using some of that to light a fire under the Siri team’s a$$?
People don’t program a voice assistant with Shortcuts. They program their preferred workflows from within the Shortcuts app. If they want they can assign a spoken sentence to that workflow in order to trigger that workflow through Siri. Siri doesn’t even know what the workflow or the task at hand is. “Siri shortcuts” is just an extension to Siri to play voice-triggered user commands. The same feature existed on macOS since decades.
Siri is dead last when it comes to usefulness (and accuracy) in voice assistants.
Thanks for a FUD piece of journalism.
@smaffei: ;Have you even tried Shortcuts with Siri? Personally, I use Siri at least ten times as often now as I did before the deep Shortcuts integration. In that way I’ve expanded Siri’s vocabulary with almost 40 new functions that I actually use – many times per week.
Alexa I don’t even use anymore. It was more of an experiment already from the start. Wanted to see what it could possibly give me of real value. Turned out not much, because its phrases simply didn’t correlate with my real-world needs. With Siri + Shortcuts I hit my personal use-cases automatically.
I think the piece adequately defends Apple’s approach to voice assistant direction from an economic/tactical perspective: clearly Apple has made money on hardware that had its voice assistant whereas the competition has not. But it’s kind of ignoring Siri’s strategic weakness: whereas Apple seems content to make Siri an ever more talented id1ot savant, Google and Amazon are aiming at making their assistants conversationally capable servants.
I’m a big Apple fan - have nearly every one of their devices. But to be honest, I’d much rather be using Google Assistant than Siri. The only reason I stay with Siri are my concerns for privacy and Siri’s deeper integration with my phone and other Apple services/devices.
Siri shortcuts are a joke - nobody, except Apple geeks, even know about them. Heck, even though I know about them and have 2 computer science degrees, I don’t even use them. People shouldn’t have to “program” a voice assistant to make it more useful - that should be the job of the Siri engineering team! As the author continually points out, Apple is making heaps of money - how about using some of that to light a fire under the Siri team’s a$$?
People don’t program a voice assistant with Shortcuts. They program their preferred workflows from within the Shortcuts app. If they want they can assign a spoken sentence to that workflow in order to trigger that workflow through Siri. Siri doesn’t even know what the workflow or the task at hand is. “Siri shortcuts” is just an extension to Siri to play voice-triggered user commands. The same feature existed on macOS since decades.
I think people also tend to confuse the Shortcuts app with Siri Shortcuts built into apps. The Siri Shortcuts built into apps can be used without using the Shortcuts app at all or they can also be integrated into a Shortcut (in Shortcuts app) to add more functionality.
For instance, I referenced the alarm.com app earlier, in my garage I can tell my watch to arm my alarm system. That’s the Siri Shortcut available in the alarm.com app. But that same Siri Shortcut is also used in a Shortcut I created in the Shortcuts app that also activates my “Goodnight” Scene from the Home app.
The only people using Shortcuts on a regular basis are power users like Federico Vittici. It’s great for power users but the average iOS user shouldn’t be expected to know or learn scripting to get the most out of Siri.
The genius of Shortcuts is that there are easy ways to create them still without knowing how to learn scripting. Also, that one can go further and learn scripting if they want.
Oh I wish Siri really was the champion at every days tasks: calendar events, tasks and repeatable task, alarms, timers, playing music or app stations, multi room speakers, device and light control. I find that I am met with frustration while using Siri and, although Alexa is not perfect, it does appear to do these items in a better fashion. Using Alexa with iCloud and Apple Music integration works wonders. Lastly, short cuts appear to have great potential, but my limited exposure involves items that freeze a lot or require device unlock to complete.
Comments
I use Siri in my car via Car Play to listen to my text messages and respond, get directions to a destination, play music, answer and make phone calls. My eyes stay on the road and my hands on the steering wheel. And my vehicle is a pickup, not the quietest of environments. My HomePod, iPad and Watch do most of these things while I am at home.
I admit that I have not tried Echo for anything so I can not compare them, only relate my experiences.
It says Siri has been embarrassingly behind and lacks various features Amazon has spent tremendous amounts of resources to develop.
Did you read it, or are you just playing Chatty Cathy, where you plug your own string and play your recording of your contempt for the author?
The point of of the article is that that the hype of Alexa—and all those invested resources—have not accomplished anything for Amazon, while Apple has been virtually 100% unaffected in continuing to make all the available profits from consumer tech hardware sales.
You always assume editorials are defending Apple. But Apple doesn’t need to be defended. It’s gobbling up the world. The article is defending the previous articles you defensively attacked. You were wrong. You just can’t admit it. So you pull out a straw man about how frustrated you are with Siri. Are you unaware that everyone else that uses Siri knows of its limitations?
The article isn't about Siri’s relative prowess in being able to understand your speech. It’s about BS media narratives that are hogwash.
But you know this.
I’m a big Apple fan - have nearly every one of their devices. But to be honest, I’d much rather be using Google Assistant than Siri. The only reason I stay with Siri are my concerns for privacy and Siri’s deeper integration with my phone and other Apple services/devices.
Siri shortcuts are a joke - nobody, except Apple geeks, even know about them. Heck, even though I know about them and have 2 computer science degrees, I don’t even use them. People shouldn’t have to “program” a voice assistant to make it more useful - that should be the job of the Siri engineering team! As the author continually points out, Apple is making heaps of money - how about using some of that to light a fire under the Siri team’s a$$?
What would you suggest would bring more “balance” or “focus” to this piece? Fewer examples of predictions that turned out false? Less evidence of the negative ROI Amazon got from developing a low value, albeit often impressive technology? I’d appreciate your feedback.
It is not even controversial to say that Siri Shortcuts make Siri ultra powerful. And that idea is not related to whether Alexa or other voice services still have (as the article described) features that Siri doesn’t have.
The article points out pretty clearly that after four years of blown expectations, there’s no reasonable expectation for Alexa suddenly making billions. And over the last 4 years, Apple has earned $200 billion in profits.
So yes, The war has already been fought and Apple is the clear winner. Prove me wrong.
There is no meaningful proof from Apple on the number of HomePods sold to substantiate this 3 million number or that the half year revenue exceeded $1Billion dollars as Apple never broke out figures for it in its financials. I would even say the fact that Apple never mentioned hard numbers about units , revenue, ASP , or Profit points to how much it is a failure (which is why the linked articles suggests the need for a cheaper unit to compete with Alexa. I would be surprised it Apple passed $2 Billion in revenue for the considering the number of sales for $250 I saw in the holiday season but it's still a possibility. The author seems to like to pick and choose which "Surveys" he finds credible and which he attacks. A later survey (https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/05/homepod-holding-at-6-percent-of-growing-us-smartspeaker-market) indicates only 3.96 Milllion sold for the year indicating Holiday sales were mostly ineffective to move the HomePod into the mainstream beyond the initial the debut 3 million of sales to Apple loyalists.
Does Apple even have 500 people working on Siri? Apple's hardware sells IN SPITE of Siri. Thankfully iOS and the Hardware is so good to overcome the anchor called Siri. Two years after this Editorial https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/07/is-apple-getting-siri-ous-in-the-face-of-amazons-alexa-echo Siri remains firmly and embarrassingly in third place. It's just pathetic to try to spin this.
Also think about how many years HomePod has been available. It’s just part of 2018.
And again, you’re attacking the idea that the article is defending Siri as the best, when that’s not even implied in the title, the lede, the article, or in the conclusion.
You shouldn't have to make shortcuts to do things that are built-in to other assistants, you shouldn't have to say things in a particular way to get Siri to understand.
Here's a sample: https://www.macworld.com/article/3309404/the-best-shortcuts-for-iphone.html
None of these may be useful to you, but the point is anybody can find them and add them without knowing or learning scripting to get the most out of Siri. lol
My friend also has alarm.com and enabled the same things I did. She also has a couple of Echos that are completely useless in arming or disarming the house when she is outside. But, besides that, how is adding Siri Shortcuts to an app different that installing a Skill on Echo?
Personally, I use Siri at least ten times as often now as I did before the deep Shortcuts integration. In that way I’ve expanded Siri’s vocabulary with almost 40 new functions that I actually use – many times per week.
Alexa I don’t even use anymore. It was more of an experiment already from the start. Wanted to see what it could possibly give me of real value. Turned out not much, because its phrases simply didn’t correlate with my real-world needs. With Siri + Shortcuts I hit my personal use-cases automatically.
For instance, I referenced the alarm.com app earlier, in my garage I can tell my watch to arm my alarm system. That’s the Siri Shortcut available in the alarm.com app. But that same Siri Shortcut is also used in a Shortcut I created in the Shortcuts app that also activates my “Goodnight” Scene from the Home app.